510 lose voting right for holding Portuguese passport

PANJIM: The names of 510 voters holding Portuguese nationality have been deleted from the electoral rolls after they ceased to be Indian nationals. This was done during the recently-concluded special summary revision ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections.

“We have deleted 510 names of the people holding Portuguese nationality. We realised that in Goa, lots of people opt for Portuguese passport and nationality,” Chief Electoral Officer Kunal told the media on Friday. Of these deleted names, 189 were from North Goa and 321 from South Goa. 

The Chief Electoral Office (CEO) has added 47,177 names of new voters to the list and deleted 25,017 names due to death or the voter being absent. Of the names added, 19,000 will be first time voters between the age of 18 and 19 years. The final roll will be published on January 5, 2017. 

Kunal said that as per the draft electoral roll, the total number of voters in the State stands at 10,85,271 of which 5,35,364 are male and 5,19,907 are female. 

“During the summary revision, our focus was basically on enrollment of new voters and purifying the electoral roll by deleting the names of dead people and identifying those shifted voters,” he said adding that the electoral roll needs to be pure to ensure that those deserving names are in the electoral list. 

Kunal said that CEO is currently in the process of identifying a Poll Ambassador for the 2017 elections. “The person needs to be a non-political face and be able to convince the voters through his message for larger participation in the election process,” he said.  

During the special summary revision, the CEO received 46,700 applications for inclusion of names in the electoral roll, 15,293 for deletion of names, 89,207 applications for corrections and 4,795 seeking transfer from one constituency to another. 

The State has around 35 overseas electors. The total number of service voters stand at 812 as per the draft roll. 

Names of 9790 voters were deleted as the person was found dead. The majority names came from South Goa 5236 while North consisted of 4554 voters. There are around 867 absentee voters identified by the CEO. 

Average number of electors per Assembly constituency is 27,132 while the average number of voters per polling station is around 661. The State has 40 Assembly constituencies. South Goa has 21 seats and North Goa has 19.